Bio

Three girls. I was the mother of three girls until homecoming night when my middle child was killed in a car
accident. In addition to causing a pivotal change in my life, it caused a fundamental change in my writing.
I write more voraciously, more passionately, and with more honesty than I have in the past. I explore forms
and style and work to improve specific components of my writing. I enjoy all writing, but currently focus on
poetry forms and creative non-fiction.

In addition I am a grandmother, empty nester, artist, English teacher, cemetery researcher, kitchen food
experimenter, and gardening failure. I live in the country and am a perpetual learner.

I abhor routine and often shift gears completely on classroom instruction, art style, writing style,
furniture arrangement, and favorite foods/places/activities. The constants in my life are art and writing,
creativity and love.

I have self-published two book Losing Sarah: A Mother's Journey to Peace (non-fiction) and Shadows and
Shades (fiction). I also have written several editorials that were published in two local papers and
two state-wide papers.

Must one have seen Moroccan mornings and Serengeti sunsets to understand truth?

Must one's tongue taste fear, relish new flavors, swallow foreign delicacies, speak in the songlike
lilt of untried words and consonants and sounds?

Must one look upon all the colors of skin: the blueblack, the olive, the warm browns, tans, reds and oranges, the whites and the creams, the yellows and the gray? or into the amber eyes, the hazel and steel, blue and green, brown and black?

Must one find real truth only through witnessing the beauty and horror the world has to offer, bearing the best and the worst in our souls? Or mightn't we find truth within the garrisons of our hearts? Can we look not on the behavior or color of another to know what counts, to know about hate and love, to know within each of us lies the capacity for both?